By Sheila McGrath
WKTV Contributing Writer
Local musicians seeking an audience – and audiences seeking local music – have a new way to find each other.
KDL Vibes, a streaming service featuring music by more than 40 West Michigan artists, went live in early December.
David Specht, digital marketing strategist for KDL, said anyone can navigate to the site at vibes.kdl.org and start listening.
“As a library, it’s our responsibility to provide quality, worthwhile, important content to our patrons,” he said. “We saw this as an opportunity to do that.”
KDL Vibes brings local music to people who don’t have the means or the opportunity to go to live shows, and it also offers musicians a big new audience. The KDL serves hundreds of thousands of patrons, Specht said.
Mark Lavengood, a songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist, has an album called “We’ve Come Along” on KDL Vibes.
“Once I started researching the mission I was just really impressed and grateful for the initiative to perpetuate the local music scene throughout the community,” he said. “Personally, I’m hopeful it might turn a few folks on to my catalog. For the community, I hope that they take to the new service and discover some of their new favorite artists, music venues, and songs.”
You don’t need to live in Kent County or have a KDL library card to use KDL Vibes. But some services are available only to those with a KDL card.
“The advantage to having a KDL library card is that you can sign in with that card and pin favorite single songs and also full albums, so it builds a playlist for you,” Specht said.
About 15 libraries in the U.S. are offering the service, which is built on software called MUSICat.
Specht said there are a lot of music-loving staff members at the Kent District Library, and when they heard about the streaming platform being used in cities like Seattle and Austin, they got a team together to bring it to Kent County.
In September, the KDL had a six-week open submission period when local musicians could send in a sample track and brief bio. They got 130 submissions.
A team of curators active in the local music scene narrowed them down to the 43 that are on the site now. In addition to Specht, the curators are Andrea “SuperDre” Wallace, Ted Smith, Hugo Claudin, Gabriella De La Vega, Eric Green, Linda “Lady Ace Boogie” Tellis, Laura Nowe, and Jake Wunderink.
“We wanted to make sure we had a collection that represents the West Michigan music scene, doing our best to include music from all the different genres that the musicians here have to offer,” Specht said. That meant they had to bypass some great music if they already had enough in that genre, but the musicians who didn’t get in the first time will have another shot.
Open submission periods for musicians will be held twice a year in the spring and the fall, so the collection will keep growing. The next open submission will likely be in the late winter or early spring, Specht said.
Both the musicians and the curators are paid a $250 honorarium for their contributions to the site.
Specht said they will keep adding new music indefinitely, and they will have a rotating panel of curators so people with a variety of tastes get a chance to choose the music.
“It won’t be the same folks from one year to the next. That’s intentional, so we can give other people an opportunity to work on it,” he said. “I feel like the project will never grow stale.”
